US customers can now preorder the Franken-Mac made into a drawing tablet.

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The Modbook Pro—the third-party Mac "tablet" created by Axiotron and recently relaunched by Modbook Inc.—will begin shipping to US buyers in November. The company announced on Wednesday that preorders were officially open for the OS X tablet, which can be customized with a Core i7 processor, up to 16GB of RAM, an SSD with up to 480GB of storage, and even a Windows 7 install. While the suggested retail price for the base Modbook Pro seems uncomfortably high at $3,499, Modbook Inc. CEO Andreas Haas says that customer interest is through the roof.

"The customer reaction to the Modbook Pro has exceeded our expectations by far. In particular, there has been a huge amount of interest from artists and creative professionals who seem to like our vision for the Modbook Pro [as] the most powerful portable tool to increase their productivity," Haas told Ars. "Because interest has been so much higher than expected, we will be focusing all our energies on ramping up production this fall to reduce wait times for the Modbook Pro as much and as quickly as possible."

The original Modbook was introduced to the public in 2008, but Axiotron quickly found itself mired in capital and economic problems following the collapse of the US financial system that year. The modified MacBook-turned-drawing-tablet largely fell off the radar until this year, when Haas left Axiotron to create his own company so he could continue to fulfill his dream of creating the Modbook Pro. The 2012 device shares the same concept as the 2008 version, but Haas' new company made a number of modifications to the original physical design to be more tightly integrated—in addition to being easier for artists to use.

"I wanted to make a pen-based Mac ever since I worked at Apple. I remember there was a test device, and Andy Warhol had an opportunity to look at it, and he just loved it. That's what I wanted to do," Haas told Ars in June this year. "The pen went to the Newton, and then that went away. I wanted to bring back this device for artists because of how I saw Andy using it. And once the Modbook came out, we started hearing from people who use it in the same way."

The day has finally arrived for interested buyers to begin ordering their Modbook Pros, though the devices won't begin shipping to US customers until "mid-November." Haas also warned that the company anticipates demand will exceed the Modbook's production capacity, meaning that the lead time for fulfilling Modbook Pro orders may extend into December and beyond.

"We've tried to make the order process as fair as possible: first come, first served," Haas told Ars on Wednesday. "Those who order the earliest will be the first to get their Modbook Pro beginning in November. We will also provide progress updates to our customers during the build process of their individual Modbook Pro systems so they can plan accordingly."

What about non-US customers? The company says it hopes to bring the new product to the US market first before tackling "the challenges posed by the international marketplace." That doesn't mean an international rollout isn't in the cards, though—Haas says there will be more information for customers outside the US in the coming months.

If you're still wondering why someone would spend $3,500+ on a modified Mac with a drawing screen over, say, an iPad, Haas has an answer for that. He told us in June that he sees the two products as existing in parallel markets, with current iPhone and iPad users being "future Modbook Pro users." In addition to being much larger, with a larger drawing area, the Modbook Pro has a lot more horsepower—not to mention a lot more RAM—which is beneficial to creative professionals.

"Almost everyone has an iPad or iPhone. I wouldn't want to live without it. But as a company, we are looking at a very distinct niche. The creative industry does not have a product that meets their need to draw on a real computer's screen and have it be portable," he said. "It's just not out there."

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Jacqui Cheng
Jacqui is an Editor at Large at Ars Technica, where she has spent the last eight years writing about Apple culture, gadgets, social networking, privacy, and more. Emailjacqui@arstechnica.com//Twitter@eJacqui

97 Reader Comments

Why would I get this over an iPad, Surface Pro, or even Samsung Slate? All are way cheaper and just as capable....

Cheaper yes, but not as capable. I own an iPad, use it almost every day. If I had a few thousand bucks to spare, I would buy one of these Modbooks.

Mitlov wrote:

Leather Rope wrote:

Author, why did you fail to mention that Apple will sue this out of existence?

Apple won't, because a full-price MBP is purchased and disassembled, re-arranged, and re-assembled to make every ModBook Pro. Apple doesn't care whether someone buys a MBP 13 or a ModBook Pro...they make the same amount of money either way.

Apple might complain about their product name and marketing however. They're skirting a fine line and are almost certainly breaching trademark law.

No doubt Apple will complain, like they have with other companies in the past, and force these guys to change the name of the product. This thing is 99.9% identical to a product that Apple sells (mostly the same hardware and almost entirely the same software), and the name they chose is exactly the same except for two letters. Not good.

Unfortunately I wouldn't be surprised if Apple tries to shut them down, but hopefully the fact they do not compete directly with anything Apple sells (or intends to ever sell) is on their side.

I was at the 2009 unveil of the 1st ModBook Pro at MacWorld. I was also at the 1st unveil of the vanilla ModBook in 2008. As I recall, at the 2009 event, Axiotron was trumpeting that they are fully licensed with apple as a Value Added Reseller. The fact that they are taking off the shelf machines and ADDING VALUE by converting them into tablets is kosher according to the license. SPECULATION: I'm sure if they have a VAR license, they probably have a contract that clears the name as well.

Or is this something along the lines of, "You want to buy a BMW and have it modified? Sounds like an advertisement for Mercedes." [car makes used as an example only and not analogous]

Imagine if someone offered to take a BMW 5-Series and turn it into a pickup truck for a total-out-the-door price of $150,000. And someone says "this whole situation is like an advertisement for the Ford F-Series." Which, fully loaded with amenities, is still a tiny fraction of the price. And it's *a better pickup truck* at the end of the day because it was designed from day one to be a pickup, instead of being a luxury sedan transformed into a pickup by a mod shop.

And? Why is so difficult for people to comprehend that money is simply not an issue for others? Me? I would never purchase a ModBook, nor could I possibly ever afford one. I'll be honest: I find it pretty silly. But that doesn't make it somehow wrong for others to. That seems to be the main problem people are having here.

I'm sorry but reading the other comments doesn't change my mind. As for the past, Apple or otherwise, let's keep that in the history books where it belongs.

You make gross misperceptions about me if you think to stereotype type me based off a couple comments. I make up my own mind, by looking at all the facts, not by adhering to others ideas.

As for what I have said, I am sticking to it. Apple would either A) make it itself, as there is a market for it and therefore profits to be made or B) prevent it from being made, as there is nothing to gain and something to lose. It makes total business sense and the shoe fits for the path Apple is currently on.

Seriously though, why the hell are you bringing up Angry Birds? We are talking about hardware, or at least I am.

The fact of the matter is that you're wrong. Your opinion isn't based on facts, or anything reasonable. You have no understanding of Apple, their business models, trade law, and don't even seem particularly bright based on your way off the mark opinion of what Apple is going to do.

This product, including the name, has been sanctioned by Apple. Apple isn't the ogre of a company you seem to be projecting them to be, they don't behave in the manner you described.

You have no idea what youre talking about, regarding this issue. You are wrong as wrong can be.

Apple WILL care. Bottom line, they will view this as someone taking money from their pockets. They will see it as an untapped market belonging to THEM.

Seriously, the one thing anyone here should know is that if anyone is going to be making money off Apple products, it is Apple and Apple alone.

THEY LICENSED EVERYTHING REQUIRED FROM APPLE! They've been doing this since 2008. This is FULLY approved by apple. The point is the user buys a real macbook which is then post-purchase customized, which MANY companies legally do (just not to this radical extent).

Apple is not only not losing a dime, they're also FREED of having to provide any form of warranty of customer support (other than for the OS and apps via fee based support), so it;s even better for them. It also makes apple customers out of people who might not otherwise be.

Finally, if/when apple DOES decide to make a full touch full OS X machine, they'll easily undercut this by $1500 with the same specs, since appel could themselves add that screen for about $400-500 instead of the $2100 markup Modbook is chanrging over the $1300 MBP 13" w/ SSD configuration this starts as. If/when apple is ready, Modbook will simply no longer be capable of providing a product at a comperable price, and won;t touch apple's bottom line a single cent, until then, they're actually putting people in Macs instead of the competition, which apple continues to profit MORE from than common consumers of the same specced machine. They're 100% onboard with this model.

I personally wouldn't buy one. I would preffer to use a Cintiq, but we've known of this modbook since before the iPad came into the market. Hell, I think it was since before the iPhone...

The Cintiq is great for people who do art for a living. I just wanna sit on the lounge in an ad break for my favourite sports game, a glass of beer in one hand and a tablet running Xcode or a Bash prompt in the other.

I use the iPad that way now, and it's great. But I'd like to have something less user friendly and more unix geek friendly. Unfortunately these prices are out of my reach.

falsoman wrote:

Point being. This is definitely not the same as Phystar. What the guys at modbook have been doing is completely legal and they have even presented this stuff at MacWorld expo or the WWDC if memory serves me well. They have been selling complete notebooks, just modified.

I agree, it's nothing like Pystar. But I do still think "Modbook Pro" is a bit too close to "MacBook Pro" for a device that is not made by Apple but does build on their platform. I guess it depends how many they sell.

Modbook was clearer, Apple doesn't own the letter "M" and they don't own "book". But when you add the "Pro" to the end, it starts to get a bit less clear. I can see some people assuming this is made by Apple, especially since it runs their software.

Apple is ALLOWING this, with written agreement in place. Modbook did all the legwork and approved to make this legal back in 2008. This is not new.

That said, making up a $1300 MBP 13" by an additional $2100 to essentially add a $400 touch panel, you need to have some damned special needs that simply can't be met by any other product on the market to considder buying this. I mean, you could buy a Retina MBP and a much nicer Wacom tablet, PLUS an iPad, and still come out cheaper. A few hunderd dollar premium over parts is reasonable, $2100 over is not.

They said the demand for this was "amazing" and I'd personally peg amazing at somewhere about 100 people in the whole world who preorderd. I can see some need for some very select people (mostly pro artists, since the 13" MBP is not even remotely an engineering workstation, so portable CAD isn't exactly part of the consumer base), but they're going to have to be rolling in cash and have zero willpower both to bite, or be giant fanbios with access to a corporate purchasing card and no questions.

What would designers think about a way to use a Windows Stylus PC as a "dumb terminal" for stylus input to a Mac? What if someone wrote drivers so that you could work on a scaled view of your whole screen, but then quickly switch to a zoomed in view on the tablet screen for detail work? That would cost a heck of a lot less than a Modbook.

The OSX license is quite clear that it is only licensed for use on Apple hardware. The object as a whole is no longer Apple hardware, and as such, invalidates the license.

While others have pointed out that the ModBook vendor has an agreement with Apple, you're not necessarily wrong. The phrase in the current (Mountain Lion) retail SLA is "Apple-branded computer," and, while I have no idea what this would mean to a judge, the plain English meaning is along the lines of "a distinctive computer model marketed by Apple."

aaronb1138 wrote:

Apple may use this legal minutia as they wish, but this is the reality. Do you think Apple will allow these buyers to purchase AppleCare for the non-altered hardware and OSX software

Purchase? Of course — I can buy a boxed AppleCare plan with no identification, let alone proof of purchase. Activate? So long as the registration information and serial number check out, why not?

Point being, the AppleCare Protection Plan covers neither third-party hardware nor damage due to third-party hardware, modifications, or repairs by anyone not expressly authorized by Apple, so plans purchased for MacBooks with obvious, extensive unauthorized third-party modifications aren't a bad deal for Apple, as they can reasonably (even in customers' eyes) reject a larger percentage of warranty repairs.

The "Apple-branded" terms, on the other hand, aren't about lost sales due to customers running OS X on non-Apple computers merely, as "Apple-branded" computers sold with questionable third-party components built-in are, in the long term, far worse for the Apple brand than obviously non-Apple white box clones (c.f., Windows users blaming Microsoft for bloatware and buggy drivers).

Apple WILL care. Bottom line, they will view this as someone taking money from their pockets. They will see it as an untapped market belonging to THEM.

Seriously, the one thing anyone here should know is that if anyone is going to be making money off Apple products, it is Apple and Apple alone.

Read the other comments. This company has been around for a while, and used to work with Apple to sell these. Apple won't care. You and others have no idea what you're talking about. I wouldn't even be surprised if some apple engineers helped give them pointers on how to make this happen.

Your perception (or gross misperception) of apple is based on the caricature that the Android fanboys have painted (or ms fanboys of you're older).

And you realize that tons of people have made millions off apple products that aren't apple? Would you even know who Rovio was if it weren't for Apple...?

What would designers think about a way to use a Windows Stylus PC as a "dumb terminal" for stylus input to a Mac? What if someone wrote drivers so that you could work on a scaled view of your whole screen, but then quickly switch to a zoomed in view on the tablet screen for detail work? That would cost a heck of a lot less than a Modbook.

RDP style software does not pass pressure readings at the moment. The closest is RemoteFX / RDP 7.x for Windows 8 / Server 2012 which is the first RDP client/server to support multitouch. To clarify, I mean multitouch on the client being transmitted as multitouch to the host. At the moment, it can support up to 256 touch points, but I have checked with the team, and stylus pressure support is not a top priority, but may come in the future.

MS RDP, Citrix ICA and possible VMware PCoIP are the only protocols anywhere near the latency needs for touch, much less stylus, interaction to work. Stylus interaction needs sub 50ms (really ~10ms) latency to operate effectively. This is why Wacom is able to sell the Cintiq at such a premium. After a little more thought, PCoIP would be interesting if it could pass the Wacom digitizer as a USB device. As I recall it can't pass HID (human input devices) but perhaps their would be some form of hybrid driver hack where touch was local mouse, digitizer a non-HID device. I don't think this has any relevance to OSX though, much less users without a corporate grade VM / terminal service infrastructure.

The upper end convertible and tablet Windows PCs share enough hardware with MBA/MBP series that it would be more useful to check which models the Hackintosh guys have working well. Might be tricky sourcing compatible Penenabled software from Wacom though.

The "this is Apple hardware..." line is a nice laugh. Apple uses the same parts as mid-level corporate laptops and better ultrabooks. Nothing is special as far as the internals go. They get better battery life by using better battery arrangements (multiple smaller cells) for a couple extra Wh and using much more aggressive thermal and SpeedStep settings. The only parts that make a MBP better than some ultrabook class hardware: the keyboard, touchpad, and case have been neutered from the Modbook, so that argument is similarly moot.

Actually, after looking at their current hardware, I'm a tad curious to figure out which e-Bay seller they are for MBP replacement parts (assuming they purchase and convert complete MBPs).

Much of this brings up one of my standard points regarding desktop UIs and all of the pointlessness of the vitriol against Windows 8 Start screen. If you're doing productive, content creation oriented work, the desktop UI should be 3 minutes of your day. All of the major content creation suites are equally available and usable on Windows and OSX. If anything, there is more available these days on Windows, and even Adobe updates versions more quickly for Windows.

Lastly, Windows Journal makes for an interestingly great sketchbook program with the proper options set (link goes to YouTube video demo). It's also wicked fast on any hardware you throw it on... all the way down to single core Atom processors.

Much of this brings up one of my standard points regarding desktop UIs and all of the pointlessness of the vitriol against Windows 8 Start screen. If you're doing productive, content creation oriented work, the desktop UI should be 3 minutes of your day. All of the major content creation suites are equally available and usable on Windows and OSX. If anything, there is more available these days on Windows, and even Adobe updates versions more quickly for Windows.

I keep hearing this but it just doesn't seem true to me.

I used to spend 8-12 hours per day in Photoshop and Maya and while the UIs of those specific applications were fairly similar (not 100% identical though) on Windows and OS X I still found myself dealing with all those little things that come with using a specific operating system. Save/Open dialogs, application switching, window management and once again, all the other little things. Yes, each thing by itself isn't a huge and major difference but when you add them all up you do wind up with different experiences.

Now, maybe I'm just oversensitive but I've never liked the Windows UI, it's always had a certain clunky feel to me (and lets not mention how it looks). And this isn't something new, I'm not talking about "I started using computers in 2007", I mean "I didn't like Windows when it was 3.x and I don't like Windows 7 all that much either".

So, do I think OS X is perfect with sparkly unicorns and magic glitter? Of course not, but there are differences in the UI which I am more comfortable with and it runs the proprietary software I want it to run (I can't remember if there's still a Maya version for Linux but I do remember trying to use it a few years ago and having the usual issues that come with a lot of major productivity applications on Linux, if you're using anything but the recommended distro with default settings you get to enjoy having half the keyboard shortcuts not working and other little glitches that need to be fixed which breaks your concentration and forces you to context switch).

Oh, and OS X is UNIX so I can actually use the terminal and all my usual favorite software (before anyone even mentions Cygwin, it's an ugly-as-fuck hack which integrates poorly with Windows to say the least. As for Powershell, it's decent for scripting but as a day-to-day interactive terminal it's just as clunky as the rest of Windows).

"The company announced on Wednesday that preorders were officially open for the OS X tablet, which can be customized with a Core i7 processor, up to 16GB of RAM, an SSD with up to 480GB of storage, and even a Windows 7 install."

I agree, it's nothing like Pystar. But I do still think "Modbook Pro" is a bit too close to "MacBook Pro" for a device that is not made by Apple but does build on their platform. I guess it depends how many they sell.

Modbook was clearer, Apple doesn't own the letter "M" and they don't own "book". But when you add the "Pro" to the end, it starts to get a bit less clear. I can see some people assuming this is made by Apple, especially since it runs their software.

But Axiotron has had a trademark on Modbook for 4 years now, don't you think Apple would have acted by now - considering how fast they usually act when someone violates their trademark?

Too bad there isn't a kit option. I've got a MBP that's I'm likely to replace soon. If I could order just the "Modbook Pro Build Kit" and build it myself I would. But I'm not willing to pay for someone to do the same to a new MBP.

The Tech Spec page says there is one (or will be).

Edit: or not - the kit is the mod, and has "in the box" the Modbook Pro (fully assembled, integrated with base system and ready to use)

How does the Samsung Pen Based tablet compare? Ok the CPU and RAM are more but it seems to me that the overall theme of the device is how the artist uses it. And the artists uses the software first and that is where the overwhelming impression of a system is.I am thinking of Autodesk SketchBook... vs. What ever will be used on it...

Careful what you ask for.... I have one of the 'old' Modbooks - a complete waste. It's heavy, has exceptionally poor battery life and - the real killer - Axiotron used a Wacom Bamboo tablet as the base of their machine. The stylus is a cheap plastic affair that can not be switched out for any other Wacom stylus. You are at the mercy of whatever company is pushing the product to get additional styli in the future. Further, you can't work with the keyboard when you have the thing in your lap and as most Photoshop aficionados know, the keyboard is an important part of the Photoshop Experience.

Most of the useful software for the machine wasn't even made by Axiotron - they were user generated utilities.

So this guy has essentially dumped his early customers and wants to try again. More power to him.

I'm sorry but reading the other comments doesn't change my mind. As for the past, Apple or otherwise, let's keep that in the history books where it belongs.

You make gross misperceptions about me if you think to stereotype type me based off a couple comments. I make up my own mind, by looking at all the facts, not by adhering to others ideas.

As for what I have said, I am sticking to it. Apple would either A) make it itself, as there is a market for it and therefore profits to be made or B) prevent it from being made, as there is nothing to gain and something to lose. It makes total business sense and the shoe fits for the path Apple is currently on.

Seriously though, why the hell are you bringing up Angry Birds? We are talking about hardware, or at least I am.

I'm pretty sure I saw the ModBook in the Apple Store (the old one - which had hardware an associated gizmos) at one point. Apple has been cool with Axiotron, and I presume Modbook. Apple will never make this themselves (unfortunately) because it's too niche. Hell, they're barely interested in MacPros....